Svante August Arrhenius
(1859–1927) was a Swedish scientist who won the Nobel Prize for his work in
physical chemistry. In 1896 he became the first person to show by calculation
that burning fossil fuels would produce global warming.
Arrhenius was born at Vik, Sweden,
the son of a land surveyor. He was an infant prodigy in mathematics and a
high-achieving student. His early work was poorly regarded by his professors
but provided the modern understanding of acids, alkalis and salts. It later
gained him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Arrhenius had a distinguished
though often controversial career. He did important work on the rates of
chemical reactions (producing the Arrhenius equation) and contributed to
immunology, geology and astronomy.
He became rector of Stockholm
University in 1896 and in 1900 helped establish the Nobel Prizes.
Global warming
Arrhenius was interested in the
origins of the ice ages and in 1896 he made calculations of the Earth heat
budget. He drew on work by a variety of other scientists including observations
of the moon.
He showed that the Earth would be
much colder if its atmosphere did not contain water vapour and carbon dioxide –
the ‘greenhouse’ theory. He concluded that the release of CO2 from
burning fossil fuels would change the atmosphere enough to raise the Earth’s
temperature – global warming. This, he thought, would be a good thing!
For
more information:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
- Crawford, Elisabeth T., 1996: Arrhenius: from ionic theory to the greenhouse effect: Science History Publications. 0881351660
I was searching material for my thesis work about global warming. This theory seems very informative and interesting. I think it's a good starting point. Thanks for sharing the links as well.
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